Post Battle Realizations
by Somariel
Summary: Who are these girls Lafarga meets when he comes back to himself? Set in the manga universe.


A/N: Many thanks to Antoinette Veronica for beta'ing this for me.

All recognizable dialogue and thoughts are taken from Tokyopop's 10th anniversary translation of Magic Knight Rayearth.

* * *

_Ow,_ I thought as I cautiously opened my eyes, my exposed skin aching like a fresh sunburn and the scent of scorched armor and smoldering cloth surrounding me. _I guess I didn't manage to evade that spell._

As I carefully pushed myself up off of the rocky ground, I realized that this was _not_ the plaza in front of where the Pillar's castle used to be. "Wh-where…am…I…?!" I said, sitting back on my haunches. "Where's…th-the princess?"

Somewhat dizzily, I raised a hand to massage the headache I was starting to develop. Then, seeing a girl in front of me—how had I missed her?—I said "I must rescue Princess Emeraude!"

"Rescue the princess?" the girl said. "You're not one of Zagato's baddies?"

"Zagato?!" I cried. "No!" What had given her _that_ idea? "Lord Zagato kidnapped the princess! As the High Priest, he was bound to serve Princess Emeraude and protect her so that she may continue her prayers…but he…" I trailed off as I remembered what he had done. He had moved the entire castle to kidnap the princess!

"I-I tried to stop him. I stood to face the traitor and then…" What _had_ happened then? Why couldn't I remember anything after Zagato extending a glowing hand?

Shying away from the headache that trying to remember was causing, I took a good look at the girl in front of me. "My god!" I cried. "What happened? You're wounded!"

She was severely wounded, really. Blood was running down both cheeks from two large cuts—one just below her left eye, the other just above her right eye—and was smeared all over her armor. The sleeves of the shirt she was wearing under the armor were in tatters, her arms bleeding from multiple cuts, and the hem of her skirt and her legs were in the same shape as her sleeves and her arms, respectively.

"Don't worry," she said. "You obviously were under Zagato's control."

Under Zagato's control? Had_ I_ been the one who inflicted those injuries on her?

"It's no big deal," she finished.

No big deal? How could she possibly say that?

Before I could ask her that, though, strange things started happening to her. Ribbons of fire began spiraling up from the ground around her, lifting her in the center of the spiral, and her armor—all of her clothing, actually—started to dissolve into streams of fire.

"My sword and armor…" she cried. "They're changing!"

Behind her, I could see rocks breaking and two more girls being lifted by elemental spirals—one of wind and one of water. Those girls had appeared to be trapped by the rocks before they started breaking. Had I also been the one to do that to _them_?

All three of the girls were now completely encircled by their element and I watched as fire, water and wind formed into three very different sets of armor and three unique swords, unlike any I had seen before, appeared in the girls' hands.

Then an echoing voice drew my attention to a ledge above the girls, where a fiery creature was standing. "Magic Knight," the voice said, "I recognize the strength of your feelings for your friends as proof."

Before I had a chance to wonder what the voice was talking about, the creature dissolved into flames and then reformed as a gigantic red mechanical humanoid.

Then a beam of green light shot out of the jewel on the chest of the wind girl's armor and another of blue light shot out of a similar jewel on the water girl's armor. An enormous sphere of wind appeared at the end of the green beam and one of water appeared at the end of the blue beam. When the beams faded and the spheres dissipated, there were two more mechanical humanoids now standing where the spheres had been.

The…creatures, for lack of a better term, gathered around the ledge that the girls were standing at the end of and an echoing, three-toned voice said "Young women from another world, summoned by Cephiro's Pillar, you may now merge with us and become true Magic Knights."

Then the jewel on the chest of each creature began to glow, a different symbol appearing in each jewel. The girls held up their swords and then each of them disappeared in a burst of their element.

As soon as the creatures' jewels stopped glowing, a girl's voice called "Selece" and the blue creature, the one that had appeared from the sphere of water, swished its tail. Another girl's voice called "Windam" and the green creature, the one from the sphere of wind, flapped its wings. Then the voice of the first girl I had seen, the one who had told me I had been under Zagato's control, called "Rayearth" and the eyes of the red creature flashed with light.

Then that same girl's voice asked "Are we really Magic Knights now?" Her voice seemed to be coming from the red creature. Were the girls inside the creatures somehow?

A loud, enthusiastic-sounding "Puu" from in front of me directed my attention down to a small white rabbit-like creature. Where had _it_ come from?

The girls seemed to take the creature's exclamation as an answer, since the 'Selece' girl then said "Now how do we find this Zagato character?" Were they planning on taking on Zagato?

The rabbit-like creature gave another "Puu" and a beam of light shot out of its forehead and into the sky.

"The sky…?" the 'Rayearth' girl said, sounding surprised.

"The light points to the sky," the 'Windam' girl said.

"But wait a sec!" the 'Selece' girl cried. "Didn't Mokona tell us before that he didn't know where Zagato was?"

The rabbit-like creature—apparently named Mokona—gave an innocent-sounding "Puu", but his expression was far from innocent.

The blue creature turned towards Mokona, clenched hands trembling, as the 'Selece' girl shouted his name and then it was chasing Mokona in circles. It halted the chase as the other two creatures lifted off the ground and joined them as they took off into the sky.

It appeared that the girls were indeed inside the creatures somehow and they really were planning on taking on Zagato.

As the creatures headed off, Mokona hopped back onto the ledge I was standing on and gave several joyous-sounding "Puu"s as he watched them leave.

"Who were those girls?" I asked as I stared after the creatures.

I wasn't really expecting any answer, so I was rather surprised when Mokona gave a short, authoritative "Pu!" and hopped a few steps away from me, then turned to look back at me. "Pu!" he said again, then hopped a few more steps away from me before turning to look back again.

"You want me to follow you?" I felt slightly foolish to be talking to something that looked so rabbit-like, despite the fact that Mokona had clearly shown that he could understand me.

Bobbing his head, Mokona gave an affirmative-sounding "Puu puu", then began hopping away again. This time, I followed him.

I soon noticed great curtains of fire in the direction Mokona was heading and as we got closer to them, the temperature began to increase.

When Mokona stopped, it was in front of a large pair of doors framed on either side by the curtains of fire I had noticed earlier. The doors were set into a wall of rock that seemed to go up forever and extended off to the sides for as far as I could see.

Carved above the doors was an animal head that had a strong resemblance to the fiery creature that had become the red mechanical creature. The head was set at the bottom of a flame-shaped relief and in the center of the relief was a circle containing the same symbol that had appeared in the chest jewel of the red creature.

"Puu puu," Mokona said, first looking at me, then turning to look up at the carvings above the doors.

"Is this supposed to help me figure out who those girls were?" I asked.

Mokona bobbed his head, then looked between me and the carvings again.

I wasn't sure how the carvings were supposed to help me, but I decided to try and figure it out anyway.

Looking at the carvings as I thought, I grew more and more certain that the animal head carving was supposed to be that fiery creature.

"Are those creatures important to figuring out who those girls were?" I asked, looking down at Mokona.

"Pu!" he said, bobbing his head again.

So they _were_ important. And if they were important, then those echoing voices probably were as well. Now I just had to remember what they had said. I was certain that the three-toned one had said something about the Pillar, but I couldn't remember what.

After racking my brain for several minutes, I was finally able to recall the exact words. _Young women from another world, summoned by Cephiro's Pillar._

From another world? Summoned by the Pillar? It couldn't be!

"Those girls are the Legendary Magic Knights?!" I gasped, shocked by my conclusion. They were so young!

"Pu puu!" Mokona said, bouncing up and down excitedly.

"May the Pillar protect you," I murmured, looking up at the sky. "I wish you good luck."


End file.
